The holding tank was too large for an arm dunk. His prodigies’ solution had been freakishly chilling. They’d picked up the smallest specimen from Karaveht—a girl of five or six—and dumped her into the tank.
He’d about shit his pants as the child disappeared inside the vat. The thought of all those nanobots crawling over her, eating their way inside of her... He shuddered, the breve climbing back up his throat.
They’d hauled the kid back out five hours later. Since then, the whole lot of them had turned back into mannequins while staring at the ventilation grates. That was where he lost track of their thinking...if they were capable of human thinking.
He knew why the specimens had accessed the NNB26 tanks. They were soaking up the rest of the bots, preparing them for dispersal. Their obsession with the ventilation shafts even made sense. They obviously considered them a viable distribution option.
But why didn’t they try to access the tunnel door, or the elevator? Did they know both access points were physically disabled? Had the eyes and ears monitoring the Nantz building’s computer system passed on what escape routes were a waste of time?
But even if they knew the tunnel was inaccessible, shouldn’t they try to shed the bots at the foot of the door? The prototype could scurry beneath the exit, even if the infected could not walk through it. Then again, he hadn’t installed an atomic force microscope on the tunnel door. Maybe the damn things were already marching beneath it.
Instead of approaching the tunnel or the elevator, the specimens in both rooms stood in clusters beneath the ventilation ducts, although none of them had tried to reach it.
Did they know the shafts went nowhere? The basement ventilation system was a closed system, unconnected to any other ductwork in the building. The separation was a safety protocol, meant to ensure chemical spills wouldn’t leak into the upper floors. If something went wrong in one of the basement labs, the consequences stayed in the basement.
He switched over to the first camera in the testing lab and straightened from his slouched position over the burnished black desk. Comfrey had left the huddle below the ventilation shaft. She stood next to the sink now. He leaned forward again, watching her turn the faucet on.
What was she up to?
At no point during the six days he’d been obsessively watching the camera feeds had anyone down there attempted to drink.That included the three specimens still breathing—aka Comfrey and her assistants. The sink had a tall, arching faucet, tall enough to fill tall water bottles or containers.
Without blinking, she bent at the knees and stuck her arm into the stream of water. The same arm she’d dunked into the testing tank. A silver stream slid down her arm and into the drain.
His stomach cramped—sudden and hard. This time he couldn’t stop the breve from hurling up and splattering over his desk and laptop keyboard. The sour smell triggered his already churning stomach and more of the contents of his stomach spewed over his laptop.
The stream of water kept running down her arm, washing the bots down the drain. He wiped his mouth on his fifty-thousand-dollar Gucci jacket and tried to breathe through the sour taste in his mouth and the panic in his chest.
There was no doubt in Clark’s mind that the NNB26 prototype knew exactly what it was doing. Comfrey had picked up a load of bots from the testing tank, and now she was washing them down the drain. From there, they’d flow into the building sewer system, which eventually merged with the city’s sewer system.
The damn things had figured out a way to escape their prison.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop them.
Chapter thirty-nine
Day 37
Shadow Mountain Base, Alaska
“We’ll head to the shooting range next,” O’Neill said. He leaned over to offer his daughter his hand. Once she grabbed it, he lifted her from the AstroTurf, where she’d been stretching after their two-mile jog.
“Why do we shoot at the end of the workout? When the body and mind are tired?” Gracie asked, the huff of heavy breathing still evident in her voice.
They had started the morning in the gym with a punching bag and wrestling mat. Surrounded by the reserved faces of various warriors, he’d demonstrated the basics of self-defense, like theelbow, eye, nose, and knee strike. She’d picked the moves up quickly, although she needed to refine her technique. Once she’d mastered the fundamentals, they’d move on to more advanced practices.
“Because you need to learn to shoot true through physical and mental exhaustion,” O’Neill said, assessing her sweaty, red face.
After the self-defense demonstration, he’d led her to the obstacle course, and had her scale a few walls, jump a few hurdles and climb the net. They’d concluded the physical training with a two-mile run.
“How long have you been exercising?” he asked. Muriel had mentioned that Gracie had been hitting the gym and the track.
“About ten days.” She shot him a quick look and fell into step beside him. Her voice darkened. “I know—I suck. I have no strength or stamina.”
“Both will come with time and discipline,” he assured her. “The body does not turn into a blade in ten days’ time.
Physical fitness was the key to a warrior’s success, be it female or male. A warrior could not think strategically if they were concerned their heart might explode. Nor could they shoot true while aiming through heaving breaths. After today, he had a fair sense of his daughter’s capabilities and ideas on how to improve them.
Now it was time to assess her proficiency with firearms. “Have you fired a weapon before?”
